This story speaks of so much sadness but it also shows true humanity and the best of Australia. It doesn't bring a smile to my face but it does make me feel pride for these fellow Australians and human beings. I like to think it's good news coming out of bad news.
By John Ferguson, Lucy Carne and Kelmeny Fraser
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26161179-952,00.html
THEY'RE the angels of Samoa - five Queensland medical students who survived the tsunami then stayed in Samoa and worked in terrible conditions to save hundreds.
With little more than a few bandages, simple first aid tools and amazing courage, they blocked out their own terrifying experience to tend to the scores of battered bodies carried into the hospital, many of them in need of a miracle.
In the gruesome reality that exists in emergency triage, the student doctors helped treat those who needed aid first, comforted those who could wait . . . and witnessed the sad toll inflicted by the killer 3m waves which smashed into the Pacific island paradise after a deep-sea earthquake last Wednesday morning.
"(There were) a lot of horrific wounds . . . really, really awful injuries. A lot of broken bones . . . shock and pain," said Kellie Wight, 29, a final-year student at Griffith University's School of Medicine on the Gold Coast.
Working shoulder to shoulder with Ms Wright amid the anguish and despair after the disaster were Ryan Adams, 25, Niesh Ney, 28, Aimee Hood, 30, and Lucy Barnett – all Griffith University med students.
Yesterday, as they continued their humanitarian work by joining Red Cross workers in scouring the beach on a final search for survivors, the five said they had acted on instincts they had learned from their years of study.
"Being medical students, you see things. But in Australian hospitals, everything is controlled and organised. This was in your face. So sudden, so constant," Ms Ney said.
Many of the patients they treated were viciously battered by the powerful surge, lungs pumped full of seawater to the extent that some drowned long after the tsunami receded.
"A lot of chest X-rays were taken," Ms Ney said, her voice drifting off before she could finish explaining that by then many of the victims were gasping for life. "(There were) people with massive fractures. Big, lacerated cuts."
Mr Adams, 25, recalled how he helped local medical staff rotate patients on lifesaving lung ventilators as the demand quickly outstripped the availability.
"At the time, you don't even think about it. You get in and do your best," he said.
The five Queenslanders got only a few hours of broken sleep in the first two days after the disaster.
Yesterday, they insisted the real heroes were the Samoan doctors and nurses who knew personally many of the victims they were treating.
But for several strokes of fate, the five young medical students could easily have been among those carried into the hospital.
The group, who finished their final exams just a few months ago, arrived in Samoa just over a week ago to do work experience medical electives.
They were on their way home after a similar five-week stint in a hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Staying at a beachside hotel on the north side of the Samoan island, they were awoken by tremors on Wednesday morning.
They came out of their hotel to see the ocean being sucked away – almost 200m back from the shoreline, exposing the reef and seabed.
Instantly, they knew what was coming and knew they had to run, joining hundreds of others sprinting as fast as the could along the street towards higher ground.
Everyone was desperately trying to flag down passing cars, but none would stop as they were already dangerously overloaded, people even clinging to the sides as the vehicles sped to safety.
Finally, a ute pulled over and the group of young medicos joined about 20 others, who somehow squeezed into the back. They drove to the top of a nearby mountain where they waited for almost two hours as the tidal surge tore the heart out of the southern side of the island.
When the immediate danger had passed, the five knew what they had to do. They asked the ute driver to take them straight to the main hospital in the island's capital, Apia.
Nothing in their medical text books prepared them for what they were about to see.
Mr Adams, using a public telephone outside the emergency room, managed to get a short call to his mother, Margreet, a doctor who lives in the Brisbane suburb of Graceville.
"He just wanted me to know he was all right, but I could hear in his voice he was shaken," Dr Adams said.
"It was quite devastating . . . he said there were about 100 people dead. He said it was really bad, a lot of kids were dead.
"He said it was hot and a lot of people had very severe injuries.
"They were doing chest X-rays and a lot of people had drowned. He took one young man into intensive care but there was nothing that could be done for him. It was all very distressing."
Dr Adams said her son felt frustrated that, being a medical student, he knew he didn't yet have the expertise needed in such a life-or-death situation.
"It's very distressing, especially seeing such young people die and thinking perhaps if they were someone else (a more experienced doctor) they could have been saved," she said.
Ms Ney's mother, Irena, who lives at Capalaba in Redland City, said she could hear the fear in her daughter's voice when she called last Wednesday night to say she was alive.
"She was in shock and she was shaking," Mrs Ney said.
But then her daughter added: "I know we have to stay and help."
Ms Ney's father, Emil, said his daughter tried to explain how difficult it was in the hospital emergency room as she and her friends desperately tried to help save lives.
"They had no bandages, no antiseptic, nothing. They were trying to treat the wounds without basically anything," he said.
Later, in a quick email she was able to send from the hospital on Friday, Ms Ney showed how remarkably stoic she was in the face of tragedy.
"Hey, Mum and Dad. I am doing really good," she wrote.
"It is pretty horrible in the hospital. All the wounds people have received treatment for have become infected.
"It is going to be hard to keep most people alive and some will lose their legs and arms.
"It is really bad and horrible."
Ms Ney told her parents that one of the injured patients she treated was a man whose face had been shredded by debris in the waves. Another was a woman who was the sole survivor from the car she was driving. Her children had been washed away.
But she said it was the injuries to the children and the pain they were now in that affected her the most.
"In many cases, just sitting down and talking to the families was all that she could do," Mrs Ney said.
Mr Adams is due to start as a first-year doctor at Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital in January,
His mother, a practising GP, believes her son will be a better doctor for the traumatic experience.
"He probably will never see anything like this again, but he will be able to see how the surgeons responded, " she said.
"It's in his character to be a good doctor. He has great empathy for people, consideration and care.
"I'm sure he will never forget this kind of thing. It's very difficult to go through, but he will be fine."
By John Ferguson, Lucy Carne and Kelmeny Fraser
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26161179-952,00.html
THEY'RE the angels of Samoa - five Queensland medical students who survived the tsunami then stayed in Samoa and worked in terrible conditions to save hundreds.
With little more than a few bandages, simple first aid tools and amazing courage, they blocked out their own terrifying experience to tend to the scores of battered bodies carried into the hospital, many of them in need of a miracle.
In the gruesome reality that exists in emergency triage, the student doctors helped treat those who needed aid first, comforted those who could wait . . . and witnessed the sad toll inflicted by the killer 3m waves which smashed into the Pacific island paradise after a deep-sea earthquake last Wednesday morning.
"(There were) a lot of horrific wounds . . . really, really awful injuries. A lot of broken bones . . . shock and pain," said Kellie Wight, 29, a final-year student at Griffith University's School of Medicine on the Gold Coast.
Working shoulder to shoulder with Ms Wright amid the anguish and despair after the disaster were Ryan Adams, 25, Niesh Ney, 28, Aimee Hood, 30, and Lucy Barnett – all Griffith University med students.
Yesterday, as they continued their humanitarian work by joining Red Cross workers in scouring the beach on a final search for survivors, the five said they had acted on instincts they had learned from their years of study.
"Being medical students, you see things. But in Australian hospitals, everything is controlled and organised. This was in your face. So sudden, so constant," Ms Ney said.
Many of the patients they treated were viciously battered by the powerful surge, lungs pumped full of seawater to the extent that some drowned long after the tsunami receded.
"A lot of chest X-rays were taken," Ms Ney said, her voice drifting off before she could finish explaining that by then many of the victims were gasping for life. "(There were) people with massive fractures. Big, lacerated cuts."
Mr Adams, 25, recalled how he helped local medical staff rotate patients on lifesaving lung ventilators as the demand quickly outstripped the availability.
"At the time, you don't even think about it. You get in and do your best," he said.
The five Queenslanders got only a few hours of broken sleep in the first two days after the disaster.
Yesterday, they insisted the real heroes were the Samoan doctors and nurses who knew personally many of the victims they were treating.
But for several strokes of fate, the five young medical students could easily have been among those carried into the hospital.
The group, who finished their final exams just a few months ago, arrived in Samoa just over a week ago to do work experience medical electives.
They were on their way home after a similar five-week stint in a hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Staying at a beachside hotel on the north side of the Samoan island, they were awoken by tremors on Wednesday morning.
They came out of their hotel to see the ocean being sucked away – almost 200m back from the shoreline, exposing the reef and seabed.
Instantly, they knew what was coming and knew they had to run, joining hundreds of others sprinting as fast as the could along the street towards higher ground.
Everyone was desperately trying to flag down passing cars, but none would stop as they were already dangerously overloaded, people even clinging to the sides as the vehicles sped to safety.
Finally, a ute pulled over and the group of young medicos joined about 20 others, who somehow squeezed into the back. They drove to the top of a nearby mountain where they waited for almost two hours as the tidal surge tore the heart out of the southern side of the island.
When the immediate danger had passed, the five knew what they had to do. They asked the ute driver to take them straight to the main hospital in the island's capital, Apia.
Nothing in their medical text books prepared them for what they were about to see.
Mr Adams, using a public telephone outside the emergency room, managed to get a short call to his mother, Margreet, a doctor who lives in the Brisbane suburb of Graceville.
"He just wanted me to know he was all right, but I could hear in his voice he was shaken," Dr Adams said.
"It was quite devastating . . . he said there were about 100 people dead. He said it was really bad, a lot of kids were dead.
"He said it was hot and a lot of people had very severe injuries.
"They were doing chest X-rays and a lot of people had drowned. He took one young man into intensive care but there was nothing that could be done for him. It was all very distressing."
Dr Adams said her son felt frustrated that, being a medical student, he knew he didn't yet have the expertise needed in such a life-or-death situation.
"It's very distressing, especially seeing such young people die and thinking perhaps if they were someone else (a more experienced doctor) they could have been saved," she said.
Ms Ney's mother, Irena, who lives at Capalaba in Redland City, said she could hear the fear in her daughter's voice when she called last Wednesday night to say she was alive.
"She was in shock and she was shaking," Mrs Ney said.
But then her daughter added: "I know we have to stay and help."
Ms Ney's father, Emil, said his daughter tried to explain how difficult it was in the hospital emergency room as she and her friends desperately tried to help save lives.
"They had no bandages, no antiseptic, nothing. They were trying to treat the wounds without basically anything," he said.
Later, in a quick email she was able to send from the hospital on Friday, Ms Ney showed how remarkably stoic she was in the face of tragedy.
"Hey, Mum and Dad. I am doing really good," she wrote.
"It is pretty horrible in the hospital. All the wounds people have received treatment for have become infected.
"It is going to be hard to keep most people alive and some will lose their legs and arms.
"It is really bad and horrible."
Ms Ney told her parents that one of the injured patients she treated was a man whose face had been shredded by debris in the waves. Another was a woman who was the sole survivor from the car she was driving. Her children had been washed away.
But she said it was the injuries to the children and the pain they were now in that affected her the most.
"In many cases, just sitting down and talking to the families was all that she could do," Mrs Ney said.
Mr Adams is due to start as a first-year doctor at Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital in January,
His mother, a practising GP, believes her son will be a better doctor for the traumatic experience.
"He probably will never see anything like this again, but he will be able to see how the surgeons responded, " she said.
"It's in his character to be a good doctor. He has great empathy for people, consideration and care.
"I'm sure he will never forget this kind of thing. It's very difficult to go through, but he will be fine."
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This discussion has slove my concern to a great extent. i am very grateful.
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